I seem to have a big problem. When I try to start one of my computers (Dell Dimension 4300 P4 1.8, XP Home) I get the following sequence:
4 lines of white text in the top left corner against a black background. Then:
Dell screen. Bar starts to fill across the bottom and gets most of the way across. Then:
On same screen, in top right corner, F2 = Setup and F12 = Boot Menu. Then:
Blank black screen with blinking cursor in top left corner. Sticks at this point and goes no further. Hitting control-alt-delete starts the brief sequence over, but it always sticks at the same point.

In the leadup to the problem I was (ironically) surfing round looking for anti-spyware options. A dodgy-looking screen popped up and appeared to be downloading things. I tried to exit but the screen froze. I managed to exit via control-alt-delete / end task. Then, as the computer had been running slowly anyway, I went into msconfig - startup and unchecked a load of boxes, as I have done in the past, to stop unwanted things starting up automatically. I have done this before without it causing any problems. I then hit the restart option, and that's when the problem occurred.

Maybe I unchecked something crucial for startup. I'm pretty sure I clicked the startup tab - I only hope I haven't unchecked things in another area of msconfig by mistake. Alternatively I guess it may be a malware thing. I do run Adaware regularly but I was looking to add another layer.

I have tried hitting F8 during the brief initial sequence in an effort to start the computer in safe mode, but it doesn't work. Hitting F2 and F12 does reveal screens, but I can't see anything that will help.

As the above probably illustrates, I am at the "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing" level of technical ability. A key concern is that the affected computer holds several years' worth of family digital photos, and only a few of these have been backed up to disk (Yes, I know. Lesson learned the hard way). It also has the family email account in Outlook.

Apologies for length of post, I wanted to include everything relevant. Grateful for any suggestions!

Your symptoms indicate that the hard drive is not being seen or if it is then no boot data is detected.

Reboot the system.
Press <F12> when the Dell logo is displayed.
Use the arrow keys to navigate down to Hard Drive Diagnostics and press Enter.

http://support.dell.com/support/topi...401E0A55174AE6

A more general troubleshooter here:

http://support.dell.com/support/topi...0C8F8293F719AB

In a worse case scenario you can slave this drive in another computer and get your pictures and other data prior to reinstalling XP.

Thanks Jephree. F12 didn't lead to a diagnostics option but a friend of a friend has offered to slave the drive to get the key data back and also to look at the BIOS problem, so hopefully will get a solution.

Thanks for the update and thanks!

Let us know how it goes or if we can help further in the future.